snOMG 2011

How did you all fare? I don't know the final tally in inches, but my car was buried up past the bottom of the windows (drifting included obviously). Took Laurie and I 2 hrs to dig out two cars (we had a little help on the second one). More importantly - no work. We were let out early yesterday and were told the office would be closed today. In the grander scheme of things in Chicago - over 76,000 people were without power last I knew. Lake Shore Drive was closed as were many of the expressways. My street still isn't plowed. I haven't heard of any casualties... mostly just inconveniences in general. I am now going to settle in with some hot chocolate and watch Avatar: The Last Air Bender (season 3) on Netflix.

I know this is a flower... but it also looks snow-flake-y

Thanks for the update, glad you two (and others in town) are doing ok. Yeah, the snow here in Michigan isn't that bad - we've only got about 4-6 inches. But as with Michigan, no telling if that'll be all or if it's just the beginning.

Yeah, a lot of us here don't feel like we deserve any of the days off from school or work we received, but we'll take what we can!

Oh yeah, I might have forgotten to share the exciting news with you all but around Christmas this past December I bought a new car! (Civic 2011). It's a nice inconspicuous "ninja gray". My first car purchase and first major purchase in my life. I share this now because I also bought a car cover for days like these - it's sitting outside but with the car cover on... these days I'm using the bus for work and school, and walking when I can. I figure when I really need it, I'll just take the car cover off and be ready to go without having to clean it up (well, may just have to shovel around my car where the landlord plowing couldn't reach). Not sure yet if this was a smart investment- there might be too much snow by the end of it all for me to even remove the car cover. We'll see though!

How are the rest of you guys?

Eh, I still had to work today. But the office was empty...only 30 people there (normally 225 or so). Our street was pretty bad but the main streets were all clear and since nobody was working today it was really easy to drive with no idiots out on the roads. Getting back in the driveway was a little more exciting, but only about 10-15 minutes to shovel out what the plow trucks had piled there. Drifting snow was the biggest issue but was pretty easy to clear. All in all not much of a storm at all and definitely not worthy of all the closings that occurred and all the hype that it got.

Wednesday was no problem at all, it almost felt like it shouldn't have been made into such a big deal. However, I'm kinda glad it did, because as Ben said, there weren't any idiots on the road because they were all scared to death, so only the people who knew how to drive were out there. The roads were pretty terrible at 12am the night before though. I went through a bunch of stop signs because my car kept getting stuck in the snow if I wasn't moving...... All in all, I felt like Michigan in general got nothing exciting.

I'll see if I can get some pictures up of all the ridiculousness that was the storm that hit Chicago. Even having grown up in Michigan, this was a lot of snow. Sounds like the final count was a little over 20" in about 20 hrs.

Uh, I didn't get any snow here, though I do miss it. However I fear that most drivers here wouldn't know what to do and it'll be dangerous in general. Stay safe, and definitely have power / heat out there.

No problem with that here...I didn't hear about anyone losing power which is a nice change. Snow but very little ice so not a lot of damage.